In the 100Yen store, there were many examples of cuteness, such as this one.I’ll confess that I never discovered if this was true.

Followed up by their first (of many!) arcade visit!

An elaborate racing game in the first (of many) arcade(s) we visited.

Here, you can see S proudly showing off her bullseye:

And with that, it was time to wander again! Our heroes encountered this odd character guarding the entrance to a different arcade. Heeding his warning, they moved on:

We both found this character disturbing.

And then it was time for Tokyu Hands! Possibly the most famous (at least to our heroes) of the ‘DePaTo’s (Department Stores), they encountered 6 floors of amazing sights:

Tokyu Hands! Our new favourite Department Store!I can’t help but think of Monty Python’s “The Black Knight” when I see this.I don’t know what game this is, but it looks like a classic.

(Upon reflection, this seems to be ‘Shogi‘, and is hundreds of years old[2].)

This was our first of many Lego experiences on this trip.They had such a variety of phone cases at Tokyu Hands, I ended up buying too many of them.The word ‘necomini’ makes me think of cat ears, but I don’t think that’s what these are.

These were amazingly colourful little educational animal skeletons preserved in what looks like acrylic:

Stay tuned for next time, when our intrepid heroes follow some oddly dressed people into a secret hideout in a park, and discover a fabulous secret!

[1]Where else do you see top view and side view maps in public?

[2]In its current incarnation, Shogi is ~400-500 years old, but its ancestors go back at least a thousand years before that.

Interestingly, his name is in Hiragana, not the more formal Kanji, I’m assuming so it’s easier to read. At the time of the election, he would have been 52, I’m not sure if that would make him young or old for running for office (as to why he would include his birth month on the poster). Also note the prominent but understated wedding ring.

There seemed to be an election going on. This is a selection of campaign posters.Another campaign poster.

“What do you want?” A very bold statement, especially with the English being given equal treatment with the Japanese language. Direct translation: “MiNNaGa LaughingFaceDeIRaReRu (of could to be) NiShiTaI (to do)”

The person seems to by Fumiaki Matsumoto. Note that the person making the poster helpfully spelled out his first name ‘FuMiAKi’, probably to help people vote.

An advertisement for a place to live. Can’t tell if it’s a rental or purchase.

Stay tuned for next time, when our intrepid heroes visit the mythical Department Store ‘Tokyu Hands’!

[1]In some ways, these repeated similar words remind me of the words around the ‘Utwig Planetary Engineering Tool’, or Ab’s commentary about the ancient weapon[3]. Also similar to many sci-fi novels’ ‘translations’ of alien languages, putting multiple words to represent one alien word, to show that their concepts are grouped differently than they are in English.

The large green label on the left reads: “MaChiWoMi ShiKu!!” or “Town/Neighbourhood (of) Beauty District”.

This would make sense, given the prominent advertisement for ‘Hair & Make & Photo Studio”. There seem to be a number of restaurants, such as the ‘YaKiToRi ToMaRiBa’ (or Yakitoi Haunt)

There are a number of things I can’t decipher, such as: “FuaMiRi- Ma-To”, and “(TeNTeN)”, which might be a cool bar with a difficult-to-search name, or perhaps an eyebrow salon.

“TeRuRuMoBaIRu”, possibly a mobile phone store, but also turned up this in a google search.

There’s also “SaNKuSa YoYoGi …” “Sankusa Yoyogi bundle opening store” But ‘Sankusa’ is in Katakana, meaning it’s a loan word from somewhere, Yoyogi is the neighbourhood, and the last three words seem to be describing it as some sort of store. If we were there, it would probably be easy to find out. 🙂

The last one is in the lower right corner: “DaNSu SuTaJhiO M&S Company”, which sounds like a Dance Studio! 🙂

The previous map and the next map were beside one another on the street, suggesting that they referred to the same or similar neighbourhoods. At the time, we had figured that these maps were some sort of neighbourhood directory, but I had thought that the one above was commercial, and the one below was residential.

A zoomed-in neighbourhood map.

At the top, in blue on white, it seems to say “INTa-NeTo”, beside a ‘DoKoNeTo’ ad, suggesting it’s an internet company ad. Beside it is a pointer to a QR code, which I will ignore, because QR codes are silly.

I can’t make out too many words in this one, perhaps a ‘KuRi-Su’, there’s a JR station on the right side of the map, ‘SaSaNiTaWa-‘, and many others I can decipher even less about.

What can you figure out? I feel like this has helped me with a lot of Katakana practice (and Yoyogi-recognition practice), but I still have a long way to go. It’s also interesting to see how many different neighbourhoods that we had heard of were so accessible to each other, often just by walking at random.

Stay tuned for next time, when our intrepid travelers, now that they’re oriented themselves, start actually experiencing the city!

[1]Some of their explorations from that first day, related to the design of the city and various objects, were captured earlier in ‘Thoughts on Design in Japan‘.

As part of our preparation for going back to Japan (and now that I’ve finally organized all of my pictures), I’ll be revisiting our first trip there in 2012. Part of the goal is to help me re-learn Japanese, part is the fun memory lane trip.

We rejoin our intrepid travelers in Tokyo, by Shinjuku station. As they prepare to exit the station, they consult the map:

YOU ARE HERE: A closeup of the area around Shinjuku Station, our favourite Tokyo train station.

Moving on to ‘Shinjuku Southern Terrace’ (literal translation ‘Shinjuku SeZeN TeRaSu'[4], which you get to through the ‘Southern Terrace Entrance’ (‘SeZeN TeRaSu Opening‘). Note that the last character is not the Katakana ‘Ro’, it is instead the Kanji ‘KuChi‘, for opening[5].

Moving clockwise, we see the ‘East Japan Railway Company Head Office’, or ‘JR East Sun originmaincompany BiRu’.

(Those of you who play Mahjong will likely recognize ‘East’ here. Also note that the second character in ‘Japan’ (‘origin’) takes a different meaning (‘main’) in ‘Company Head Office’.)

(I likewise learned ‘2’, or ‘Ni’ in this context from playing Mahjong. Note also that the ‘yoyo’ in ‘Yoyogi’ is an alternate of ‘daidai’, which presumably someone who grew up in Japan would know, but is perhaps non-trivial to someone trying to translate it.)

This takes us to one of the places that we stayed in Tokyo, the ‘Hotel Sunroute Plaze Shinjuku’ ‘HoTeRu SeNRu-To PuRaZe Shinjuku’, which shall forever be near and dear to our hearts. 🙂

This is right next to the ‘Shinjuku Maynds Tower’ ‘Shinjuku MaINZu TaWa-‘, which seems to be a 34-story office building.

‘Shibuya‘ ‘reluctant valley ?’ is surprisingly difficult to translate, as for some reason the handwriting recognition didn’t recognize the third character ‘district‘

Moving down to the bottom, in red, you will see one of the most important set of words to recognize in Japan: ‘Black UDoN MountainFood‘. (The operative words here are ‘Udon’ noodles and the Kanji for ‘Food’. 🙂 )

The last one that I want to translate here is in the lower left-hand corner, in red: ‘Shinjuku SeNE- BiRu 1F’ ‘FueSuTei BaRu GoRuFu’ ‘Shinjuku WING Store‘. This seems to say (to me) that there’s something on the first floor of this building, perhaps a bar and grill and store?

Katakana is often difficult to de-transliterate, as you often have no idea which language the words are loaned from. Perhaps someone in the comments can answer!

Next time, our intrepid heroes pause to ponder the immensity of Shinjuku station, where the large number of train tracks is just one part of a huge complex:

The Area around Shinjuku Station, our favourite Tokyo train station.

…and then continue on their journey. Stay tuned!

[1]Many thanks to the KanjuVG Project and Ben Bullock: http://kanji.sljfaq.org/ They were able to detect my poor drawings of kanji symbols on the first attempt, and their first suggestion was correct three out of three times (for the third symbol, I had to tell the program to ignore my stroke order)! If you’re going to be working a lot with Kanji, it’s worth learning the rules for stroke order.

[2]Interestingly, ‘Shinjuku’ means ‘New Juku’, or ‘New Lodge‘. Knowing this meaning of ‘Shin’ was to be helpful later.

S plots what she will do with her flame effect…“If I make it manually operated, I can wait until people are just past the flame effect in the maze, then set it off! “

Initial reactions were very strong:

Mirror Blaze Night Flame Test #1 (blurry):

Mirror Blaze Night Flame Test #2 “There is a lot of light.”:

Mirror Blaze Night Flame Test #3 (blue flame and backdraft tests):
I really enjoyed the blue flame in this video, and whenever it happened at the event. This set of tests were mostly us calibrating the length of time we needed to open the solenoid to get the optimal flame. If we set it off too quickly, there would be no propane in the accumulator, and we would get a small ‘foop’ flame. Setting if off for too long would give a slowly dwindling flame. The trick was the sweet spot in between.

Complicating this was the backdraft issue, where you had to have some air flow pushing the denser-than-air propane up the tube, or it would fall down and ignite out the bottom of the tube. In practice, we found that warm air (from an immediately previous ignition) was often enough to supply this airflow upwards:

Also note that the tube was starting to get sooty.

Hellblazer also got in on the flame action[1]!

Fate and a couple of participants test out her Hellblazer highstriker.

Stay tuned for next time, where we strike camp and pack up!

[1]I also have a video of Francis, but the video quality is not very good, and the words are not very sfw. PM me if you want to see it.

But first, we went and consulted Magical Trevyn. He gave us some advice about scoreboards, and we continued on our way:

Here, we see Magical Trevyn, hard at work, surrounded by parts of Mirror Blaze and Riskee Ball.We took a second to consult with magical Trevyn. He gave us advice about scoreboards, and we continued on our way.

Then we did a few tests of Flamey[1], with Marc offering debugging help from (mostly) upwind:

Flamey test 1:

Flamey test 2:

Even Cynthia got a chance to try the flame effect:

Cynthia gets a chance to try the flame effect.

Then was the part I was most afraid of. I had learned welding approximately 1 week before, and my first ever welded item was going to be supporting our dozens of pounds, expensive and difficult to source quartz tube.

And now we had to attach it to the ground so that nothing would fall over and break the tube. We had the brilliant idea of attaching it with rebar (1/2″ rebar just fit inside the square steel tubing), which meant hammering rebar into the ground (fine), but then aligning the stand with the rebar, and hammering it down onto the rebar. I couldn’t do it myself, and luckily, Patrick was up to the task of making sure my amateur welds didn’t crack under the strain:

Your friendly neighbourd sledgehammer.

Note the flame-resistant fabric and silicone placemats used to protect the tube from the possibly sharp metal frame:

#verycarefultaps Note the flame-resistant fabric and silicone placemats used to protect the tube from the possibly sharp metal frame.

Put the tube up, and we were ready to go! (Note that the front mirror is still open here, for easy testing (and we’re not totally sure the flame won’t melt it.)):

Every small ding is a possible catastrophe when it’s in your difficult to source mission critical component.Ready to go! Sarah on control, Patrick with a healthy appreciation for fire.First successful flame test!The team looks on (from a distance) as S performs another flame test!

Mirror Blaze Flame Test #1:

Mirror Blaze Flame Test #2:

Leaving us with our favourite iconic picture:

Our favourite iconic picture of Mirror Blaze, with S setting off the flame effect, and Patrick standing at a safe (though warm) distance.

Next time, we get to see what Mirror Blaze looks like at night! Stay tuned!

First, a test of the mirrors (warning: not for the easily spun nauseous):

Then, more panel attachment!:

Jim and Liz help S attach a mirror panel as Callum and Patrick reflect.

Then, just before we attached the last couple of mirrors, rain struck! Luckily, we had planned for this, and beyond making sure our gear was in our tent and power tools were covered, Mirror Blaze was fine (or so we thought).

It looked kinda cool with the water droplets:

Immediately post-downpour, the droplets make a pretty pattern on the mirrors.These mirrors were fine, even though they were marinating in water for hours. In the midground, you can see Francis all bundled up, and Fate back at work on Hellblazer.Callum and Carrie talk over things probably related to Riskee Ball. In the foreground, you can see the cedar posts of Mirror Blaze who weathered their first rainstorm well.More immediately post-rainstorm mirror fun. l-r: Rob, Sarah, Me, Mike, Patrick

Sadly, not all was fun and games, as we noticed that our two-way mirrors (the most expensive ones, of course) were susceptible to water damage, it seemed particularly around the holes that we had drilled in them:

An example of the damage caused to two-way mirrors by water we think through the drilled holes.Another shot of our proud crew.S ponders the mysteries of vampirism[1] as Andrea and Patrick move the mirror into place.A very happy S, now that she is again reflective.

That’s it for today! Next time, we start playing with mirrors and fire!

[1]Note that S stopped being visible in mirrors. One can only guess at the reason.

The first part of the maze that our crew built was the central triangle:

Sara shows us how two-way mirrors make you even more badass.

To help you place things, here’s the overhead view again:

The Overhead view of the maze. This design was stable throughout the process. The only modification we made was to remove post 24 and its attached mirror.I have no idea where anyone is in this picture.Mirrors are fun (and Riskee Ball agrees).Can you tell that this is a two-way mirror? I almost can’t.Our initial integration build crew! l-r: Liz, S, Jim, Me, Patrick, AndreaAlex and Patrick work on one of the tricky double mirrors.The crew work busily on Riskee Ball, as Case and Rob plan out the Charnival grounds periphery in the background.Kate attempts to retun to the land of the Looking Glass.

The following is probably the most useful (and one of the simplest) tools I’ve ever used. Patrick started using it when we were attaching mirrors to post hinges, and it allowed for much, much easier alignment. We ended up purchasing like five of them for the playa build. It is probably correct to say that this simple tool halved the amount of time required for the build. At Canadian Tire (where I purchased them), they’re called ‘Lineup Punches’.

This is the device that saved us. Patrick used one of these to align hinges with mirrors, and we never looked back. It would be correct to say that this simple tool halved the time of the build.

Stay tuned for next time, when we assemble the rest of the mirrors! Hooray!

Marc had arranged with some friends of his for a large field to be available for the weekend. This allowed us to spread out and use a lot of space to setup. It also offered some interesting logistical challenges. You see, the large trucks (26′, I think) couldn’t make it all the way to the back field, so we had to offload onto pickup trucks[1] for the last leg of the journey. Thankfully, we had two on hand[2]:

Mike runs after one of the smaller trucks, on the way up the hill to the back field.One of the pickup trucks, demonstrating proper Kate transportation technique.

There was a lot to move, with teams at the large truck unloading, doing transport via pickup truck, and unloading the pickup trucks at the back field.

Marc, S, Mike, Carrie, and Kate take a rest in between heavy lifting.

So, if you’ll recall, the purpose (for us) of this weekend was to do as much of a build as we could, an integration test to make sure that our design and construction for Mirror Blaze were sound. Here’s the overhead view:

The Overhead view of the maze. This design was stable throughout the process. The only modification we made was to remove post 24 and its attached mirror.

Here’s the list of the mirrors and posts that we ended up using for the integration test. Note that we constructed the inner triangle surrounding the flame effect, along with a small corridor on the left so we could test the feeling of being inside the maze ablaze:

The list of parts we needed for the build.

The next couple of pictures should give you a sense of the size of the area that we were fortunate enough to have to play with for the integration weekend (and the incredible number of people who came to help out, my apologies for names I’ve missed). Also, you can see the staging area where the pickup trucks would drop off parts for the various installations:

The unloading depot for the back field. In the foreground, you can see a selection of parts from Francis and Mirror Blaze. Background l-r: Case, Seth, Patrick, Rob, Fee, John.

[1]This was similar to the occasion when we had to move biosafety cabinets from one part of campus to another, where the loading dock was around a corner where the large trucks could not go. The solution was the same, offloading onto a pickup truck.

[2]I think one was Seth’s, and I don’t remember who had brought the other one.

Last time, we talked about learning to weld, so that we could build a stand for the quartz tube for the first integration weekend[1].

First, we had to make sure we had all of the parts for our flame effect (and that we had built it!). Luckily, we had purchased all of the parts during our expedition to the excellent Helios makerspace in Montreal (post forthcoming):

The parts for one flame effect ‘Flamey’.The list of the parts shown. Note that this was written at a most excellent parts store in Montreal where we were visiting the also most excellent Helios makerspace.

We called our flame effect ‘Flamey’ because we are creative like that:

The solenoid we used to build Flamey.Lights such these are ultra-useful for builds (assuming you have a generator…you do have a generator, don’t you?)

A few days before integration weekend, I recall running around to hardware stores looking for non-abrasive things with high melting temperatures. I found the fabric below (in the welding supply section of a Home Depot, IIRC), along with silicone placemats (not in the welding supply section):

This ‘flame-protection’ fabric (along with silicone place mats) saved the quartz tube from abrasion from my metal stand.saved the tube

Also, we had not been camping in many many years, so I went to get some inflatable pillows. They were okay, but I would bring ‘real’ pillows next time, unless space was a critical consideration:

Inflatable pillows! Okay in a pinch, but if space isn’t critical, I would use a real one.

(Not shown. Tests of the flame effect. S might have pics of this, to be shown later.)

Then it was time to pack up and go! Trish drove the truck over to our place (Francis had been at least partially living in our garage for a while), and we started packing! We are still thankful for the many volunteers who tolerated our hinged posts:

Sara, Carrie, and Mike work to ratchet the posts into place. The posts were extremely effective, but a total bear to move around (thanks for helping us move them!).

There were some moments of pure joy juxtaposed with moments of pure contemplation:

S joyfully moves pipe while Trish ponders the Reuben’s tube that is part of Francis the Fantastic.